Dark Nights: We Are the Flesh

Living alone in an abandoned building, Mariano (Noé Hernández) spends his time in a seemingly never ending drugged state. To survive, he exchanges food for items he creates which are passed by an unknown sourced through a small slot in a wall. Stumbling upon his hideout, Lucio (Diego Gamaliel) and his sister Fauna (María Evoli) break in and find Mariano unresponsive on a bed. They explore the building and eventually fall asleep, only to be woken up by an annoyed Mariano. Instead of casting them out, he draws them into his world of madness, where he believes you should act on every dark desire you have. Fauna quickly falls under his spell, encouraging Lucio to join her, and eventually convincing him to have sex with her. From there, the trio begin building a womb-like structure, descending further and further into complete insanity.

We Are the Flesh isn’t really a structured, narrative driven film. There’s no explanation as to how anybody came to be in this building, or why they would continue to stay there. This is more of an exploration of what would happen if you simply forgot everything that prevented you from doing things, and acted on every urge and desire you had. It’s a bit like an Oedipal complex come to life. It’s facing selfconcious fears head on and destroying them. It’s accepting madness as sanity in an attempt to overcome everything that holds you back physically and mentally in the world. We Are the Flesh is a disturbing trip into insanity, plain and simple.

Viewers willing to take this twisted, sexually charged journey into the depths of Hell can head over to Shudder Canada now to test their limits, but you should be warned that it won’t be an easy ride. It’s not hard to see how We Are the Flesh received a “D” rating in Mexico, a rating typically reserved for porno films. Sex and nudity may be the main element here, as there’s very little in the way of violence or gore. At first, things are just uncomfortable. Mariano enlists the help of the siblings, but nothing really disturbing happens at first, assuming you don’t think that Mariano’s very weird behaviour is disturbing. It’s when he convinces Fauna to seduce her brother that things get out of control.

A scene of graphic oral sex comes next, followed by extended close-up shots of male and female genitals. A scene that may contain rape, as it’s hard to decide if the act was unwanted at all, comes next, and the rest of the film is filled with more male and female full frontal nudity than you’ll find in any film outside of a softcore movie. Whether it’s all necessary will be up to the viewer to decide, but it at least fits in with the idea of letting go of everything that holds you back. If you’re going to embrace that kind of madness, then incest, nudity, sexual behaviour, violence, and murder are going to come easily.

We Are the Flesh shows that it’s not a very large step for any of us to slip into madness. Like every cult leader before him, Mariano’s convincing and charismatic personality quickly draw his followers in. What he says doesn’t sound as insane as it really is, and Hernández plays the character so perfectly. You can see that he’s unstable just by looking in his eyes, but he also comes across as trustworthy. You really do feel like he would look out for you at any cost. Of course, what you have to give up for that would be unimaginable. Evoli has perhaps the hardest role of the film. Pleasuring herself on top of corpses, screaming on the ground while her brother has sex next to her, swinging wildly from excessive happiness to unbearable sadness, and spending a lot of time naked, you’ve got to wonder how Evoli would wind down at the end of the day. She certainly has the hardest work to pull off emotionally, as well as physically, and her dedication to the role is impressive.

This will not be a film for everybody, especially those uncomfortable with graphic nudity and sex, and an almost complete lack of gore may leave some horror fans wondering what they’ve gotten themselves into. We Are the Flesh does offer some very fascinating questions among all its over the top sex and madness, and despite the very disturbing subject matter, repeat viewings would actually reveal more each time. You’ll probably just need a few days off before heading back into this outrageous world. Prepare yourself and head over to Shudder Canada to watch.